How to use it?

Just install the program and connect to the BitlBee server with your
favourite IRC-client. You will be force-joined into the control channel
where root (the bot, your assistant, the bee) will try to help you to get
the program working.

As soon as you get your accounts working, you can add users to your contact
list and talk to them, just like you normally do on IRC. Open a query, talk
to the person in the channel, or even talk to them in groupchats that will
look to you like just another IRC channel.

If you don't want to (or can't) install BitlBee on your own machine you
can also use one of the public servers. If you
use Windows, this is the preferred option, unless you use cygwin.

BitlBee 3.5.1

2017-01-30 17:58 UTC

BitlBee 3.5.1 is available for download now. This is a security/bugfix-only release:

purple: Fix crash on file transfer requests from unknown contacts. This was the result of an incomplete fix in the previous release and may result in remote DoS. Read the full security advisory (CVE pending)

After some investigation we decided to reclassify a crash fix from the previous release as a security issue. Read the full security advisory (CVE pending)

Included help.txt in the release tarball, which was missing in the previous release and resulted in adding python as a build dependency. The release tarball of 3.5.1 does not require python.

Purple users, or all users of versions older than 3.5, are strongly recommended to upgrade to this release or apply the patches in the linked tickets

BitlBee 3.5

2017-01-08 23:35 UTC

BitlBee 3.5 is available for download now. This time with 124 commits from 11 contributors (Full changelog). Highlights:

"chat list" command: shows a list of existing server-side chatrooms. With some protocols, this is often the only way to add new channels.

MSN: Undead. May ask you for brains. Update to this release and use it.

Google talk: Same as before. Not dying.

Update: Forgot to mention: user-guide.{txt,html} are not included in the default build anymore, as part of the documentation changes. They were a 'flattened' version of the built-in help, and very few users were aware of their existence, so they are gone.

The html version is now available here. Note that some parts (such as the installation section) are very outdated. This will be fixed soon™.

BitlBee 3.4

2015-03-17 13:37 UTC

BitlBee 3.4 is available for download now. It's a big release, with 123 commits from 11 contributors. Full changelog. Highlights:

Twitter Filter channels - Search by keyword/hashtag or a list of users. See the wiki page for more details!

Google talk:Not dying. It mostly works, just no groupchats. Consider using hangups if you need those.

MSN: Dead in this release. Two years after they announced it would shut down, microsoft actually retired MSNP18. See also ismsndeadyet.com. There's a work in progress branch (soon to be merged into develop) that fixes it by using MSNP21 instead.

Also, the main development repository moved to github, because all the cool kids use git now. (well, actually because dx took over as a core developer)

BitlBee 3.2.2

2014-07-05 21:53 UTC

BitlBee 3.2.2 is available for download now. If you want to know what's new,
just read the changelog. tl;dr: If you care about OTR, you do want this
version.

From now on, new versions will only be announced via the Twitter account,
because really these news posts were just a third rehashing of the
changelog.dx edit: disregard that, writing announcements is fun.

BitlBee 3.2.1 fixes Twitter issues

2013-11-28 00:15 UTC

BitlBee 3.2.1 was just released, which should fix compatibility issues with
Twitter introduced by HTTP/1.0
deprecation.

If you're using im.bitlbee.org or testing.bitlbee.org you
shouldn't have to do anything, they're already updated.